Ever wonder how you make a decision when you buy something? Do you naturally go through a process? Well, research has shown, that a consumer goes through a buying decision process when purchasing something. Now, that’s great, you now have a new piece of information for your next trivial pursuit game – right. Here is the deal, as online marketers, we need to understand the consumer buying decision process so that we can build our sites, understand how to effectively marketing online and how we should manage our checkout and post purchase relationship to engage our online customer at each point in the buying process.

So, what is the process you ask…. Here are the six stages of the consumer buying decision process:

1. Problem Recognition (awareness of need)
2. Information Search
3. Evaluation of Alternatives
4. Purchase Decision
5. Purchase
6. Post-Purchase Evaluation

First, you may notices that the actual “purchase” is only one part of the process. Also, not every buyer event goes through each step. Lastly, not ever buying decision leads to a purchase.

Let’s go through each step briefly.

Problem Recognition in this stage, a consumer realizes or recognizes that their desired state is different from their actual condition. This could be a simple as “I’m naked, I need clothing”, or “I’m hungry, I need food.”

Information Search in this stage, a consumer recognizes their need (or want) and sets forth to find a solution. If it is clothing they need to solve their problem, the look for clothing, if it is food, they look for food.

Evaluation of Alternatives in this stage, a consumer has a good idea of what they want, now they are looking at the options that exists. They are evaluating the features of products and brands.

Purchase Decision in this stage, a consumer is processing the information from the information search and deciding on the products, store, payment options. More importantly, they are making the decision to move forward with the purchase or not.

Purchase this is the stage that the transaction is completed. The actual problem that was recognized is solved!

Post-Purchase Evaluation in this stage, the consumer determines if they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the purchasing outcome. Here is where cognitive dissonance occurs, “Did I make the right decision.”

Understanding each step in the process and how it relates to our job as ecommerce marketing gurus is important, and where we will spend our week. How can we influence the consumer along each step of the process.

Now that you have an overview of the process, we will talk about each step the consumer goes through and how we can influence it! Talk to you tomorrow.

Chris Reighley is an eCommerce marketing professional, online consumer behavior expert and social marketing evangelist. He is currently working on a PhD in eCommerce for Northcentral University in Prescott Valley, Arizona.  Chris owned and operated many ecommerce retail stores in the music, golf and health & beauty categories.  Currently Chris is the Director of eCommerce at FillTek in Cincinnati, Ohio where he works with online retailers such as Hugo Boss, Tretorn, Tommy Hilfiger and Bluefly.